The day a Fleetwood Mac guitarist went out for a magazine and joined a cult instead
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In 1970, the world was changing – and so was Fleetwood Mac. Over the latter half of the preceding decade, the blues-rock outfit had become one of Britain’s best-loved bands, thanks to their refreshing take on the R&B of Elmore James and Muddy Waters. That sound was defined above all by frontman and guitarist Peter Green – his soulful, emotive playing and warm vocals encapsulated in a track like ‘Oh Well’.
Despite their first three albums – released across the final two years of the 1960s – being met with considerable acclaim, by 1970 things were beginning to fall apart. In one of the era’s most notorious stories, following a party at a strange Munich commune that May, Green – who had taken one too many LSD trips and was becoming increasingly consumed by mental health difficulties and disillusionment with fame – walked away. He wanted to return to the person he had been before success, and even attempted to give away his earnings.
It was a period of intense upheaval for the group. Another member growing restless was guitarist Jeremy Spencer, credited with cementing that iteration of the band’s Elmore James-influenced sound. In a sign of the fracture to come, Spencer released a self-titled solo album in January 1970 – months before his final record with the band, their fourth studio LP, Kiln House, that September.
By February 1971 the band were in Los Angeles, staying at the Hotel Hawaiian ahead of a show at the Whisky a Go Go. Spencer had reached his limit. Listening back to a live recording that featured the departed Green, he told his bandmates it sounded “shit” – and that was that.
The following day, he told the band he was going out to get a magazine. He never came back. After an extensive search, Fleetwood Mac discovered their guitarist had not disappeared, died, or been kidnapped. He had joined a cult – a Christian group called the Children of God, whose path he had crossed en route to the shop.
The band were shaken to find Spencer had cut his hair and changed his name to Jonathan. But he had done so entirely of his own choosing. A believer in Christ already, he had met a street preacher on the way to the newsagent who introduced him to the group. He was looking for a way out, and he had found one.
“I was sad, uninspired musically, I had questions about life, death, love, my future, God – everything,” Spencer recalled years later. “I couldn’t go on with it. Bottom line, I had to leave in order to step back from the picture and get my life sorted out. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t and they would not have gone on to be one of the biggest bands in history! I don’t say that in a self-demeaning way, because I knew when I heard the first album with the Buckingham-Nicks line up, that they had hit on something good with an enormously catchy appeal.”
He added: “Besides that, after I left them, I prayed for God to reward them with success beyond their dreams. He answered that prayer.”
With Spencer gone and a sold-out show fast approaching, Fleetwood Mac turned in desperation to the man who had started it all: Peter Green. He agreed to see out the remainder of the tour, bringing along his friend Nigel Watson, a conga player. Reflecting his fragile state of mind, Green insisted on playing only new material – nothing from his own back catalogue. He and Watson stayed for the final week of dates, before Green made clear he had no interest in rejoining permanently. The search for a long-term replacement began once the tour wrapped. That replacement was Bob Welch.
Content retrieved from: https://whynow.co.uk/read/jeremy-spencer-fleetwood-mac-cult.
